Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,-- One touch of fire,--and all the rest is mystery!
The moon is hidden behind a cloud... On the leaves is a sound of falling rain... No other sounds than these I hear; The hour of midnight must be near... So many ghosts, and forms of fright, Have started from their graves to-night, They have driven sleep from mine eyes away: I will go down to the chapel and pray.
The spirit-world around this world of sense
Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
A vital breath of more ethereal air.
Some feelings are quite untranslatable; no language has yet been found for them. They gleam upon us beautifully through the dim twilight of fancy, and yet when we bring them close to us, and hold them up to the light of reason, lose their beauty all at once, as glow worms which gleam with such a spiritual light in the shadows of evening, when brought in where the candles are lighted, are found to be only worms like so many others.
All the means of action -- the shapeless masses -- the materials -- lie everywhere about us. What we need is the celestial fire to change the flint into the transparent crystal, bright and clear. That fire is genius.
How can I tell the signals and the signs
By which one heart another heart divines?
How can I tell the many thousand ways
By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
Sweet as the tender fragrance that survives, When martyred flowers breathe out their little lives, Sweet as a song that once consoled our pain, But never will be sung to us again, Is they remembrance. Now the hour of rest Hath come to thee. Sleep, darling: it is best.